DR. SALOMÓN LERNER FEBRES – Human Rights Leader

March 26, 2012

During the week of September 25, 2009, Dr. Salomón Lerner Febres received threatening telephone calls both at his house and at his office at the Catholic University of Peru. The caller left a message warning, “What we did to your dogs, we will do to you.” These telephone calls followed the poisoning and killing of Dr. Lerner’s dogs by unknown persons on September 5, 2009.

Lerner is the former head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Since the Commission issued its report in 2003, Dr. Lerner has been a victim of a number of incidents of harassment and has received repeated threats by phone and email. In addition to presiding over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Lerner is the president of the Institute for Democracy and Human Rights and vice president of a commission charged with creating a Museum of Memory, which will focus on human rights abuses in Peru.